SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column doss not necessarily preclude subsequent rerieto.)
Les Grandes Heures. Par Henri Lavedan. Quatrieme Serie. (Paris : Librairie Aeademique Perrins et Cie. 3 fr. 50 c.)— M. Henri Lavedan, the distinguished French Academician, in Les Grandes Heures gives us indirectly some interesting sidelights upon French feeling in the darkest time of 1917. His exquisitely finished little essays are written for a purpose. His polished periods have a task and a mission. France needed every voice that could nerve her to renewed exertions, console her for her hurts, or bring to her any sense of optimism and hope. Therefore
all M. Lavedan's essays must be judged in their role of propaganda as well as of works of art. The choice of subjects will give a
clue to the needs of the time. The noels of the time will excuse an occasional artistic infelicity or apparent insincerity. For example, " Les Veuves blanches " and " Le Portugal." In the essay on the deliberately ravaged Somme area, written in April, 1917, " Le Cri des Choses," M. Lavedan achieves eloquence. He tells with real passion how the villages and little flourishing towns have been reduced not merely to ruins but to something hideous and sordid. Where the cannon alone has wrought destruction, " ou s'est exereee franchement la brutalit6 de l'obus, la destruction garde toujours, si terrible qu'elle soit, une
sorte de fatalisme grandiose." But here the work has been carried out with a horrible perverted thoroughness, day after day, month after month, and the result is a kind of festering rubbish-heap :- " T_In pele-mele ignoble de debris, d'objets degrades, etouffes, tordus les uns centre les autres. . . . Ce sot est une source, et nous y buvons le philtre amer et cuiraculeux qui empbche d'oublier. Tout homme, auquel it aura ete permis de voir let de toucher ces vestiges, n'a pas he droit de demeurer un spectateur muet . . . de gander pour lui seul sa revolts et sa baine ; it doit les seiner, les repandre eomme un mot d'ordre et dire a eliacun faites passer."
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